In every mass killing over the past two decades, the shooter
has been taking powerful mind-altering prescription drugs.

Psychotropic drugs have been used for the purpose of suppressing
fear and enabling murderous rage for a long time. In Dispatches, his extraordinary
book about the war in Vietnam, Michael Herr passes this along about the
use of drugs by American soldiers:

Going out at night the medics gave you pills. . . . I
knew one 4th Division Lurp [Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol] who took
his pills by the fistful, downs from the left pocket of his tiger suit
and ups from the right, one to cut the trail, the other to send him down
it. He told me that they cooled things out just right for him, that he
could see that old jungle at night like he was looking at it through a
starlight scope.

Today, many of our children are prescribed the same psychotropic
drugs as are given to our soldiers, in the children's case for the treatment
of such conditions as ADHD and for psychiatric disorders. In fact, the
practice of psychiatry has become in many cases nothing more than a license
to distribute powerfully addictive, brain-damaging drugs to our children.

And where illegal drugs such as cocaine and "speed"
are often cited for their negative effects, in fact, among the drugs that
are often prescribed for ADHD, Ritalin is chemically virtually identical
to cocaine and Adderall is a mix of four powerful amphetamines. We're
addicting more than ten percent of our children - overwhelmingly boys
- to these drugs because they have difficulty sitting still and paying
attention in class.

And those who aren't prescribed the drugs can purchase
them without prescriptions through online drug outlets or from friends.
In fact, among many children, using psychotropic drugs has become de rigeur.
When their friends are prescribed these drugs, peer pressure dictates
that they themselves also be able to take the drugs, and the black market
for such substances among young people is very large.

One thing must be made very clear: Psychotropic drugs
of any kind, whether or not they're stimulants, damage our brains, especially
our frontal lobes. The frontal lobes are the area of the brain that enables
us to make rational decisions, to avoid taking unnecessary risks, and
to experience empathy for others. Recently, the term "frontal lobe
syndrome" has been brought into use to describe the effects of prolonged
drug use that damages this portion of the brain and increases our propensity
to act violently and with depraved indifference.

Among the consequences of physicians' irresponsible prescribing
practices is this: In every single gun massacre over the past several
decades for which we have reliable information about drug use, the shooter
has been taking psychotropic drugs prescribed by a physician. It is arguably
the case that if the shooters who have committed such recent atrocities
as that in Newtown had not had access to psychotropic drugs, the shootings
would not have occurred. That they are occurring more frequently and are
escalating in brutality - if that is possible - is due to the fact, not
that we are legal gun owners, but that we are legal drug users.

As far as we are aware, every study of the effects of
the long-term use of psychotropic drugs, whether illicit, "recreational"
- e.g., alcohol - or prescribed, indicates that such use causes brain
injury, especially to the frontal lobes, by far the least rugged area
of our brains. Over time, the consequent frontal lobe syndrome renders
a person increasingly incapable of inhibiting impulsive and violent behaviors
while at the same time generally sparing the intellect so that such drug
users can systematically plan their assaults but are unable to refrain
from carrying them out.

Young people are far more vulnerable than adults to the
negative side effects of all drugs, and criminal activity by young people
under the influence of drugs becomes an iatrogenic outcome in an anything-goes
society that does its part by placing few restraints on its younger members'
behavior and compounds that by looking the other way as they damage their
brains with prescription chemicals that magnify the youngsters' capability
to exhibit violent behavior.

How can we talk about protecting our kids from gun violence
if we don't at the same time protect their brains from iatrogenic drug
violence, the real cause of such behavior? In fact, children who refrain
from the use of drugs and alcohol - and this includes prescription psychotropic
drugs as well as illegal drugs - are much less likely to commit violent
crimes as adults than children who have used such substances.

The area in which we need much more restrictive laws is
not gun control; rather, we need tighter and more restrictive controls
against allowing psychotropic chemicals to get into the brains of children
21 years of age and younger, during which time their brains are developing
and very vulnerable. The war against drugs needs to begin with eliminating
prescription psychotropic drug availability to and use by our children.

Gun control laws, or the lack thereof, had nothing to
do with the Newtown massacre. Adam Lanza was denied a permit to purchase
a gun, but that didn't prevent him from committing a gun crime. In the
meantime, and for a long time to come, there are going to be great quantities
of "legal" psychotropic drugs out there, not least because "psych
meds" are still going to be prescribed to children as if they were
candy.

Until we have the will to demand an end to prescribing
psychotropic substances for our children, we must call for the hiring
of armed security guards at schools, as we already do in many inner-city
locations, and for the upgrading of schools with bullet-proof access portals.
These are things we must do based on the truth that it's the drugs, and
not the guns, that are the real danger.